Joe burns hopes of hundred in milestone match

Joe Burns was left to shake his head in frustration after his hopes of posting a century in a landmark 100th Marsh Sheffield Shield appearance for Queensland vanished in the space of an ill-judged single and a piece of inspired fielding.

Having set himself the goal of batting most of day three to try and engineer a result in the rain-impacted game against South Australia, Burns batted patiently through today's opening session and even survived the distraction of over-enthusiastic crowd members to reach 85 at lunch.

However, his self-inflicted dismissal soon after the break triggered a mid-innings slump that briefly raised the Redbacks' hopes of achieving first-innings parity before James Bazley bludgeoned his team to a 102-run lead.

The Bulls piled on 50 from the final 10 overs of their innings as SA opted to employ short-ball tactics against their rival tailenders which netted the wicket of Gurinder Sandhu but played into the hands of free-swinging Bazley who clubbed 64 from 53 balls.

Then the early removal of SA opener Jake Weatherald (1) revived still-fresh memories of the Redbacks' calamitous collapse on day one when they crashed to 5-25 before lunch.

But Jake Carder (49no) and Daniel Drew (37no) ensured history did not repeat with a defiant, unbroken 81-run second-wicket stand before a return of mizzling rain and deteriorating light brought a premature end to the day with SA 1-89.

Both batters defied recent form lines – Carder had not reached 50 in his preceding 14 Shield innings, while Drew had recorded ducks in his past two outings – to reduce SA's deficit to 13 heading into tomorrow's final day.

With the possibility of further showers tomorrow, even the availability of more than 100 overs in an extended day four would seem unlikely to deliver a result with the pitch flattening out and scoring becoming more straightforward.

"I think it's potentially quite risky to dangle a carrot, but perhaps if we go out and score really quickly tomorrow there's still a lot of overs left in the game," SA allrounder Nathan McAndrew said after returning his first five-wicket haul of an injury interrupted season.

"But I think that's less likely than likely."

Burns and Jack Clayton had battled to get on top of the disciplined if-not-altogether daunting SA bowling attack throughout an extended opening session, which yielded just 87 runs from almost 40 overs under thick cloud.

Around eight minutes of that two-and-half-hour session was occupied by Burns taking issue with the 700 children from more than 20 metropolitan and country schools who were invited by the SA Cricket Association to take part in coaching programs as well as watch some Shield cricket.

But Burns was distracted by the presence of such an active audience alongside the roped-off sightscreen area at Adelaide Oval's southern end, and engaged in a lengthy discussion with both umpires before ground staff relocated the young fans.

"They were sitting next to the sightscreen, which I didn't have a problem with at first and I thought it was great having so many kids in, but then they started doing the Mexican wave," Burns said with a smile, claiming it was the movement as bowlers ran in that caused the problem.

"So I said to the umpires 'I can't be the one to ask them to move, so can you please subtly turn around and maybe radio through to ask somebody to move them'.

"It was actually a great atmosphere, but I felt like the grinch asking a couple of them to move."

Image Id: 1B7BAE1831AF466799ED116DDEDF351B Image Caption: Wes Agar signs autographs for school children at the Adelaide Oval // Getty

Of greater consequence was the communication problems between Burns and his 23-year-old batting partner, with both he and Clayton in peril of being run out a couple of times trying to sneak quick singles if Redbacks' fielders had been able to throw down the stumps.

The pair had opportunity to sort out any issues during lunch, at which point Burns was on track to become the third Queensland batter (after Greg Chappell and Trevor Barsby) to post a century in his 100th Shield appearance.

However, the former Test opener didn't add to that total when, in the third over after the break, he pushed Brendan Doggett to point and called for one despite being squarely on the back foot.

And not even a despairing dive could save him when Carder hit the base of middle stump at the bowler's end.

"We were basically setting up to try and bat the day, and we knew that first session would lay the foundation," Burns said at day's end.

"So we were really happy with where we were at lunch, and then really disappointed with how the next session went.

"It's never nice to get out, but when you run yourself out it's even more frustrating.

"Of course you want to make milestones, you want to make hundreds, you want to make big scores and help your team win games of cricket and it would have been nice to make not just a hundred but 150, 200 and really drive the game from there.

"But this is the way it goes, you have these ideas around milestones but this game sucks."

That bonus breakthrough triggered a marked shift in the game, as SA's bowlers found their rhythm and some spark with the second new ball to snatch 5-52 in 20 overs with McAndrew claiming three and Wes Agar two.

It represented a welcome reacquaintance with fortune for McAndrew, who was a revelation with the ball in his maiden Shield season last summer as SA's leading wicket-taker (27 at 30.19) but had returned 1-192 in his two appearances prior to the current game.

"I did a quad strain at the start of the year and then came back probably a week too early for the game against Tasmania (last month), and just didn’t have any miles in the legs and really struggled," McAndrew said this evening.

'It was a pretty substantial injury and I thought being the all-rounder it was important to get back into the side for team balance.

"I only bowled twice in the nets – six overs each time – and then it was straight back into that Shield game.

"Then it was some back spasms and neck spasms and it felt like one thing after another not feeling one hundred per cent, so Dizzy (coach Jason Gillespie) said take last week off in Perth and rest up to hit the ground running in this game.

"So it's just good to be out there feeling physically fit, and just doing my job."

Queensland's collapse could have been worse had Max Bryant (on nine) not been spared when a top-edged pull shot off Agar flew to deep backward square leg where Thomas Kelly – one of the SA's most gifted fielders – shelled the straightforward chance.

Bryant eventually fell for 35 from 39 balls, with his enterprising innings a foretaste of the approach Queensland would take into their back end of their innings, prefacing Bazley's explosive knock.

The right-hander equalled his highest first-class score, having been dismissed for a fourth-ball duck in his only previous Shield innings this season.

The Redbacks targeted the 27-year-old all-rounder with a barrage of short-pitched balls in the clear belief that would limit his scoring, but the ploy only served to get Bazley's eye in and he soon launched an extraordinary counter-attack that carried the Bulls to a position of ascendancy.

In one over from McAndrew, he clubbed 23 runs including three towering blows that landed among the handful of SACA members in the first tier of the eastern grandstands.

In McAndrew's next over, he slapped a full ball so ferociously down the pitch the bowler instinctively threw out his right foot and immediately regretted it as his ankle took the full brunt and the ball rebounded towards keeper Harry Nielsen.

McAndrew had the bruised joint heavily strapped at day's end, but doesn't plan to get it scanned until after tomorrow's final day.

Bazley's half-century arrived from 41 balls faced, laced with five boundaries alongside those three sixes by which time SA was deploying nine fielders on the boundary – although Lehmann stationed himself about 20m inside the rope at deep cover – in a bid to minimise the damage.